Industry News

Promoting the “future of work”

Many workers have great ideas that they would love to be part of their job descriptions. This new way of working was the subject of a recent Unify survey that showed employees have differing ideas of exactly what that term means.

Changing ideas for the times
Nine hundred and sixty-one professionals around the world were asked what this new way of working meant to them, and the results were a bit surprising, said Bill Hurley, the CMO of Unify. He told Entrepreneur that 47 percent of the respondents answered that question with, 'working where I want to work.' Forty-three percent said it meant working when they want to work, and 39 percent longed for a more collaborative and flatter operation. Hurley added that he expects the numbers to continue to grow as more workers begin to understand the expanding variables and job descriptions in the current marketplace. Because so many workers are looking at varying job needs, Hurley offered some tips on how to best manage and support new virtual teams that are being established every day.

Using technology to make life easy
With virtual teams becoming more prevalent in the workplace, the use of technology as a leverage mechanism to make virtualization simpler is critical. File-sharing through the cloud and web collaboration are two ways to make the remote work concept more user-friendly and error free. Internal network sharing and social media platforms are being used to connect more securely and efficiently to the correct people for content delivery.

According to the Entrepreneur story, 86 percent of companies use more than one form of cloud computing technology in their day-to-day operations. Building a collaborative atmosphere among virtual teams is another way to optimize creativity between the off-site staffers. Author Dan Schwabel, a workplace and millennial trend commentator, explained to Entrepreneur that businesses thinking outside the box can be very beneficial.

"[Companies] can use technology to foster collaboration, crowd source new information and reach out to all stakeholders to bring customers and partners closer to employees and products."

Ensuring the right workers are in place is a huge benefit of the remote work concept as staffing agencies and hiring managers can bring on the best candidate no matter the locale. This, because virtual meetings allow real time discussion about problems or solutions and location has little or no bearing on the results.

According to Entrepreneur, it's not only the creative or IT sectors that are embracing the new paradigm, health care, automotive, finance, manufacturing and any other industry can implement these strategies and make their workers happy. By doing so a business can likely increase productivity and even keep costs down while ensuring effective and creative company operations.